NURISH aims to enhance climate resilience and sustainable development in rural and small urban communities by implementing transformative nature-based, technological and circular economy solutions. It supports the EU’s long-term vision for stronger, connected, resilient, and prosperous rural areas by 2040, contributing to territorial cohesion, innovation, job creation, skills development, better infrastructure and sustainable agriculture. The project will develop the Regenerative Rural Resilience Framework to help rural areas mitigate climate risks through nature-based solutions (NBS), fostering entrepreneurship and creating green jobs. Resilience Hubs (RHs) in Greece, Cyprus, Finland and the UK will demonstrate tailored NBS to address flooding, water scarcity and land degradation, while digital tools will support real-time monitoring and decision-making. Communities in the demonstration and replication areas will actively participate in the EU Rural Pact, promoting rural perspectives, fostering collaboration and advancing nature restoration and conservation through NBS. By sharing knowledge and scaling solutions across rural regions, NURISH ensures its strategies are adaptable and replicable throughout Europe, contributing to the EU Green Deal, the Climate Adaptation Strategy and rural prosperity goals by 2040.

The ODYSSEE-MURE project aims to support policy makers in EU Member States to fulfill their obligations in the framework of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). In particular, it provides user-friendly databases and web-tools for monitoring and evaluating the impact of energy efficiency policies. The ODYSSEE database and facilities contain and analyse latest available energy consumption and energy efficiency indicators by sector, end-use in households and services, by mode in transport. The MURE database and facilities contain and analyse energy efficiency policies and measures by sector. These tools have been conceived in the past and will be extended under this project by an experienced team comprising national energy efficiency agencies from 28 EU Member States (plus Norway, Switzerland and Serbia), and a strong technical coordination. Future inclusion of Balkan countries will be prepared under this project. We enhance, update and modernise these tools for support to the Member States through regional and national training events as well as dissemination products such as country/sector profiles, newsletters, policy briefs and webinars. In addition, we focus on operationalising the Energy Efficiency First Principle (EE1-P) for the MS, which is a key requirement in the EU Energy Union Governance Regulation . We will develop an indicator-based approach to EE1, considering wider aspects such as (1) New Societal Trends (e.g. the Shared Economy) which may increase or reduce energy demand, (2) Energy poverty, (3) the multiple benefits of energy efficiency. We will disseminate the analysis developed in this project to national bodies, inter alia by dissmeinating the outputs at key conferences (such as the eceee conferences).

Cyprus and Malta, being small islands with similar needs, will leverage on the work that they have been doing with EIT Climate-KIC to bring all the relevant partners together, exchange ideas, organize workshop and prepare action plans in the innovation field of their National Energy and Climate Plans.

The Concerted Action will support the implementation of the renewable energy directive 2009/28/EC. As with the first and second phase, the objectives of CA-RES3 are directly linked to the transposition and implementation of the RES Directive. The third phase of the CA-RES will also provide further opportunities to explore possibilities for common approaches in specific areas of implementation of the RES Directive. The CA-RES3 will achieve the objectives stated above through a series of seven plenary meetings and a joint workshop with the CA EED and the CA EPBD for discussion on the various topics. These meetings will provide a confidential forum for structured discussions and cross-learning between participating countries. This exchange concentrates on key requirements of the RES Directive according to the needs of the participating countries as well as the European Commission. As such, it will contribute to the achievement of the national RES targets set by the Directive. The CA-RES3 will emphasize topics that require common approaches and/or benefit from good practice exchange between participating countries. The CA-RES3 Core Themes will address a number of aspects including support schemes for electricity and heat, integrating RES into electricity networks, the use of RES for heating and cooling and in buildings, disclosure/guarantees of origin, biomass mobilisation and sustainability as well as the use of RES in transport. The confidential character of the CA-RES3 allows participating countries to discuss in confidence how to best implement the RES Directive. Thus, the need for confidentiality will be emphasized towards all participating institutions, and confidentiality agreements will be signed by all participants.

The 2012 Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) establishes a set of binding measures to help the EU reach its 20% energy efficiency target by 2020. Countries have also set their own indicative national energy efficiency targets. To reach these targets, EU countries have to implement energy efficiency policies and monitor their impact. The Commission has also the task of monitoring the impacts of the measures to check that the EU is on track with its 2020 target. The objective of the ODYSSEE MURE 2015 proposal is to contribute to this monitoring: • By updating two comprehensive databases covering each EU MS; ODYSSEE on energy consumption and energy efficiency indicators, and MURE on energy efficiency measures; • By providing new and innovative trainings and didactical documents to national, regional and local administrations in EU MS to raise their capacity and expertise in the field of energy efficiency monitoring and impact evaluation. • By extending the evaluation of the impact of energy efficiency from energy and CO2 savings, as already done in ODYSSEE, to the multiple other benefits. The updating of two databases ODYSSEE and MURE will play a key role to provide updated and centralized information required by each MS and the Commission to assess, monitor and evaluate energy efficiency progress and the state of implementation of measures and their impact. The project will provide innovative training tools and documents in a very user friendly way to public administrations to help them in implementing the monitoring of the progress achieved with indicators, in designing new policy measures and assessing the impacts of these measures, not only in terms of energy savings, but also in terms of the other benefits linked to energy efficiency improvements. Finally, the project will try to provide an assessment of the multiple benefits of energy efficiency policies for all MS combing existing evaluation and new calculations.